Terese Loeb Kreuzer - How to Move to Canada: A Primer for Americans

How to Move
to Canada

A PRIMER FOR AMERICANS

Terese Loeb Kreuzer
withCarol Bennett

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS / ST. MARTINS GRIFFIN
NEW YORK

To J, D, and HTLK
To Ralph, Rafe, and KateCB
And to the late Robert Bridgesactor, director, playwright,
artist, and friend to both of us

Important Note to Readers:

The material in this book is intended to provide general guidelines and is for informational purposes only. Although this book is designed to offer current, accurate, and clear information, immigration is a complex process and immigration law and other laws and regulations often change. Readers should not regard this publication as a substitute for legal or other professional advice and should seek the services of a competent professional advisor for professional advice or other expert assistance. Also, reference in this book to products and to Web sites and other potential sources of additional information does not mean that the publisher or authors endorse such products or the information or recommendations in such sources. The publisher and authors have no control over, and are not responsible for, any such product or the content or policies of any such Web site or other source.

A General Note on the Text:

All dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars unless stated otherwise.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS .

An imprint of St. Martins Press.

HOW TO MOVE TO CANADA . Copyright 2006 by T. L. Kreuzer. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kreuzer, Terese Loeb.

How to move to Canada : a primer for Americans / Terese Loeb Kreuzer and Carol Bennet.1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34986-8

ISBN-10: 0-312-34986-6

1. AmericansCanadaLife skills guides. 2. Relocation (Housing)CanadaHandbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Moving, HouseholdCanadaHandbooks, manuals, etc. 4. CanadaGuidebooks. 5. CanadaEmigration and immigrationHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

F1035.A5 K74 2006

648'.900971dc22

2006040203

First Edition: August 2006

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book could not have been written without the generous help of several dozen people. Many thanks, first, to the people we interviewed, who sometimes spent hours answering our questions about what it was like to emigrate to Canada, or what it has been like for them to live there. We thank the people who read what we had written and corrected our errors:

Bonnie Brooks and Marilyn Johnston, Ottawa teachers.

Mike Kerr, president of The Humour at Work Institute, Canmore, Alberta, and author of Whats So Funny About Alberta?

Gina Logue, media representative, Office of News and Public Affairs, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Diane Kinnee, who formerly worked for the British Columbia Ministry of Womens Equality and who provided many insights into British Columbia.

Arnold Bennett, filmmaker and writer.

Alex and Brenda Richmond, archivists in Quebec and New Brunswick, respectively.

Thank you to the Canadian tourism officials who provided us with materials and answered our questions.

Thanks to Karen Hammond, a Maine-based writer, who has provided many insights into Maines relationships with her nearest Canadian neighbors.

Two librarians went out of their way to help us:

Stephen Clarke, senior legal specialist, American-British Law Division, Law Library, Library of Congress; and

Patricia Eaton, reference librarian, Victoria BC Public Library.

Several lawyers and tax and pension experts gave unstintingly of their time to help us understand the legal and financial complexities of a move to Canada:

Michelle Carney, Carney & Marchi, O.S., Seattle, Washington.

Alan Granwell, Ivins, Phillips & Barker, chartered in Washington, D.C., U.S. International Tax Counsel 19811984.

Louisa Helander, community tax consultant, Toronto.

Jenny Hirsch, account manager Personal Financial Services, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Financial Group, Toronto.

Rudi Kischer, Embarkation Law Group, Vancouver, B.C.

Ellen Lewis, attorney who worked on NAFTA (at the U.S. Commerce Department).

Tim Susel, national financial advice consultant, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Financial Advisory Solutions Team.

Stephen Trow, attorney, of Trow & Rahal, PC, Washington, D.C.

Most especially we thank two Canadian immigration attorneys:

David Cohen, of Campbell, Cohen in Montreal (www.Canadavisa.com); and

Linda Mark of Mark & Company Law Corporation, Surrey, B.C. (www.lindamark.com).

Each of them spent many hours in person, on the telephone, and by e-mail explaining the intricacies of Canadian immigration. The Immigration Process section of this book reflects their years of practical experience, going far beyond what could be gleaned from the numerous forms and instructions that the Canadian government provides.

Finally, thanks to our agent, Barret Neville, who thought that a book about how to move to Canada would be a good idea and who made it work, and to John Parsley, our editor, whose ideas and guiding hand are everywhere in these pages.

Whatever your reasons for thinking of moving to Canada, if youre an American citizen, this book is for you.

U.S. citizens have some advantages over citizens of many other countries who contemplate this move. For one thing, most of Canada is English-speaking (though if you also know French, you will find an even warmer welcome north of the U.S. border). For another, the border between the United States and Canada has historically been very open, with people going back and forth either temporarily or permanently.

Talk to a Canadian and you will often hear of U.S. ancestry. Many Americans also have Canadians in their background. Carol Bennett, coauthor of this book, is one of them. Her father, born in Manitoba, grew up and went to college in Vancouver, but immigrated to the United States, where he married an American and settled in New Orleans. Carol, born and raised in New Orleans, got her B.A. at her fathers alma mater, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and her B.L.S. from McGill University in Montreal. Although she married an American and lives in Maryland, she has numerous friends and relatives in Canada.

For me, as for many Americans, Canada, despite its proximity, was more of a mystery. More than forty years ago I went to Quebec City and the Gasp peninsula on my honeymoon. After that, I returned once for a brief visit to Montreal. I didnt realize, until I started working on this book, how close Canada is to much of the United Stateshow easy it is to get to, and how interesting it is. It is enough like what I know to be comfortably familiar, and enough different to be an adventure.

But if youre contemplating a move, you dont necessarily want adventure. You want to know what this place is really like, whether youll be welcome and fit into a new community, whether youll be able to make a living or to live adequately on what you already have, and, if you decide that Canada is for you, how you go about applying to be a permanent resident and possibly, at some time thereafter, a citizen.